Zakes Mda - Ways of Dying

A drunk sitting on a bench a short distance away from his laughs at him. Fumes of plonk fill the waiting room.

‘Who is she, ou toppie, the woman you have wet dreams about?’

‘None of your business.’

‘Then stop disturbing our sleep with her name.’

He takes a long swig from a bottle wrapped in brown paper, and drifts into a noisy snooze. His toothless mouth moves all the time, like a cow chewing the cud. He passes wind thunderously, which suddenly wakes him up. He thinks this is tremendously funny, so he cackles shamelessly. The stench of rotten cabbage drifts from the drunk, and hovers above Toloki. This is one of the disadvantages of his headquarters. They are a public waiting room, and sometimes, especially on weekends, they are full of inconsiderate and drunken hoboes.

‘I can’t stand this.’

‘Stand what?’

‘You farting all over the place. You are not alone here, you know.’

‘You get off my case, ou toppie. It’s not my fault that you have wet dreams about watchamacallit Noria.’

He laughs again. And unleashes more thunder. Toloki feels that he doesn’t have to endure this. The fact that he has taken it in his stride for all the years he has lived in waiting rooms seems to escape his mind. Nor does he question why all of a sudden he can no longer tolerate it, when it has been part of his life for so long. He gets up, and pulls on his shoes. He had slept fully-dressed in what he calls his street or home clothes. He repacks all his things neatly in his supermarket trolley, and pushes it out of the waiting room. The drunk laughs and shouts after him in the mocking sing-song voice that children use when they tease each other, ‘I want Noria! Give me Noria! Nye-nye, nye-nye-nye!’

Toloki walks along the highway, pushing his shopping cart. It is the middle of the night, and there are not many cars on the road. He walks unhurriedly, sometimes stopping to look at the stars. And to look back at the harbour. He is going to miss the throbbing life, the nightwatchmen, the dockworkers, the sailors and their prostitutes, even the inane grins of tourists from the inland provinces. He is making a major change in his life, and it is not clear in his mind why he is doing it.

He reaches the settlement at the crack of dawn, and stops at a bus shelter. What will Noria say when he arrives at this time of the morning? Will she not be angry with him if he wakes her up at this ungodly hour? What if she is with someone?

These unanswered questions are interrupted by a group of young men who approach him. They are the Young Tigers who patrol the streets at night, like a neighbourhood watch, protecting the people from the attacks of the migrants from the hostels, and from the police and the army. They want to know what he is doing there. He tells them that he has come to visit a friend. He has walked for many hours, all the way from the docklands, and is merely taking a rest at the bus shelter. He is shaking with fear, for he has heard what these boys, and sometimes girls, are capable of. If only he was wearing his venerable costume. They would surely show some respect for it. They look him over, and decide that he is quite harmless. ‘He’s just an old bum pushing his trolley,’ they declare.

He immediately hastens away from their patrol zone, and goes straight to Noria’s shack. He knocks, and she opens the door.

‘You are up so early in the morning, Noria.’

‘I am going to help Madimbhaza with the children. My God, Toloki! I wouldn’t have known you in those clothes.’

‘These are my civilian clothes, Noria.’

‘You look strange in them. I am used to your mourning uniform.’

She does not ask what brings him here so early in the morning. It is as if she has been expecting him all along. She invites him to push his trolley into the shack, and to make himself comfortable on the floor. The donkey blankets in which she has slept are still spread on the floor, and Noria says he can sit on them. But Toloki respects the bedding of a lady, and sits on the floor, away from the blankets.

Noria tells him that Madimbhaza has many children, some of whom are physically handicapped. She goes to their shack to help her friend wash these children, and since it is Sunday today, to get them tidied up and off to church. After this she will attend a meeting of the women’s organization that is trying to improve conditions for everyone at the settlement. Toloki is welcome to come if he is interested in seeing the work she does in the community.

‘I’ll come next time.’

‘It is fine with me. I’ll be gone for most of the day. Look around and see what you can prepare for yourself.’

‘I’ll catch up on my sleep. I was on the road for the whole night.’

Noria leaves, and Toloki takes out his own blanket from the trolley. He spreads it on the floor and drifts into sleep. His eyes glide over the pictures on the wall. Perhaps he should cover the ceiling with pictures of furniture, and beautiful houses, and serene gardens as well. When sleeping on one’s back, one should be able to take a walk in the garden. Just like in his shack when he first came to the city almost twenty years ago.

He remembers his first shack. It was in another settlement, some distance from this one. He has passed there sometimes, and has seen that the settlement has since been upgraded. Proper houses have been built, and it is now a township, and not a shanty town — as squatter camps or informal settlements were called in those days. There are streets and schools and shopping centres. But when he first came to the city, the settlement was just quagmire and shacks.

He had joined homeless people who defiantly built their shacks there against the wishes of the government. Bulldozers came and destroyed the settlement. But as soon as they left, the structures rose again. Most of the people who persisted in rebuilding now have proper houses there. Toloki would have a decent house there as well if he had not decided to follow a new path that involved sacrifice, self-denial and spiritual flagellation.

In his old shack, he had plastered pictures from magazines and newspapers on the walls, just as he has done in Noria’s. The difference is that his pictures were mostly black and white, whereas Noria’s are all in full colour. They make the room look much brighter, and more luxurious. Sleeping here in Noria’s shack, it is as if the clock has turned back. He can see himself vividly, eighteen or so years ago, wearing spotlessly white overalls and an apron, grilling the sausages that are known as boerewors.

When Toloki arrived in the city, he had nowhere to stay. He had no job either. But he was determined not to be reduced to begging. He had heard when men talked in the village that many of those who came to the city worked as labourers at the harbour. Or on fishing trawlers. The men told stories of sea adventures, as if they themselves were sailors. They bragged of a world that Toloki had never imagined, even for a day, he would see with his own eyes, let alone be part of. So when he came to the city, he asked people how he could get to the ships.

Toloki got part-time jobs loading ships. At night he slept at the docklands, or on a bench at the railway station. He washed himself in public toilets. In those days, they did not allow people of his colour onto any of the beaches of the city, so he could not carry out his ablutions there, as he does today.

He made friends with some of the labourers, and together they went to the townships, and to the shanty towns that were mushrooming on the outskirts of the city. They visited women, and joined in drinking parties. He never really had a head for alcoholic drinks. But sometimes he would drink so that his mates would not say he was a weakling. Real men drank in those days, and it was a disgrace for anyone who professed to be a man to shun the fire waters.